Ask most experienced attorneys how they built their practice and they’ll tell you they “got involved” in the community or professional organizations. Maybe this advice doesn’t always use the term “leadership” but that’s what it means. If you really want to “get involved” and build your reputation, you need to do some real work rather than just paying a membership fee and adding your name to a list. This may be a little scary for young attorneys, since it is easy to think that you haven’t paid your dues long enough to qualify as a leader. It may be easy to…

I never have met Swanee Hunt or, more accurately and respectfully, Ambassador Swanee Hunt. She is the former US ambassador to Austria, the founder of the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the founder of Seismic Shift, an initiative dedicated to increasing the number of women in high political office. We share a mutual very good friend, but I keep missing Ambassador Hunt at events. I hope that changes one day soon because we both are dedicated to advancing women in positions of leadership. And I would like to thank her for her work. In a recent…

Ms. JD is pleased to announce the winners of the 2019 Public Interest Scholarship Competition! The four scholarship recipients were selected from a large pool of highly competitive applicants. Ms. JD appreciates the level of passion and personal conviction that was exhibited in the application pool, and we are thrilled to support these students in their pursuit of public interest careers. Royse G. Bachtel is a rising 2L at Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh, PA. This summer Royse will be working as a summer legal intern at the Women’s Law Project, a public interest legal center that…

One reason for the inability of law firms to keep their female and minority lawyers may come down to two words: business development. Or more accurately, business generation and the lack thereof. I met a female in house counsel at a conference last fall. She had gone in house after 8 years in a law firm. I asked her what made her go in house and her answer was that she had been practicing in a very niche practice at her firm that wasn’t easy for her to develop her own business. I asked other female in house counsel at the…

So far, we’ve talked about how to be a giver when networking and how to not overextend yourself while doing so. This month, I want to switch gears a bit and talk about something we are all doing many times throughout our careers and likely not giving as much attention as we should: sitting on a panel. Serving as a panelist is a great networking and relationship building tool: you have a captive audience ready to hear your perspective on something which you’re an expert and you are shining in front of prospective clients and people who can send referrals…

Over the past couple of months, we’ve explored the importance of company culture in your in-house practice and how to identify whether a company’s culture is the right fit for you. This month’s column wraps up my short series on culture with how in-house counsel can use your unique role within the company to promote positive aspects of your company’s culture. Think about the leadership of your company, or the company you support. While the C-suite executives serve as the formal leaders of the company, you likely have a series of informal leadership within the company as well. These individuals…

Lately, in the craze of social media, "self-care Saturday" or "self-care Sunday" has become a phenomena. What does self-care mean? To many, it means working out, taking time to yourself, going for a hike, or meditating for 20 minutes. What it should be, however, is much more than this. We should participate in self-care every minute of every day, to the extent that we can, of course. It's important to take care of your body, which includes working out, eating right, and taking care of each part of yourself. Most of us, I think, forget to take care of one…

For this month's post, I am thrilled to feature an interview with Melissa Green, an energetic, enthusiastic, and compassionate attorney who specializes in Social Security Disability law. Melissa is the daughter of blue-collar workers and the first person in her family to attend and graduate from both college and law school. Could you tell Ms. JD blog readers about your background and what prompted you to apply to law school? I grew up in rural Maine and was the first person in my family to attend college. After college I became a high school teacher for about six years, then applied to law…

The first year of law school is challenging, and you know well how vital the first year is. Your journey determines the job you get. You earn a great achievement if you prove eligible for scholarships and if you can do all the competitive and clerkships that come with doing well in your first year of law school. A right law school comes up with massive resources to be incurred, so here are few great tips for embarking the first year with great success. Leave Your Comfort Zone From The Begining While creating a network, don’t expect anyone for your…

As millennials, we are more interconnected than ever—with a variety of social media platforms and constantly evolving technology at our fingertips. It’s easy to connect with someone on LinkedIn, or follow them on Twitter, but this month, we wanted to highlight something else—beyond online connectivity—that’s important to a lot of millennials for both personal and professional reasons: in-person, community involvement. Community involvement can take several different forms, and any activity that helps you get plugged into your community and meet people is time well spent. We’ve reflected on some of the community activities and involvement that we’ve been a part…

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